Stealing The Show
by bauble123
Summary: John is directing a new play by the acclaimed Molly Hooper. The cast is set...there are just a few problems. The problem? The cast themselves. Perfect for the roles, but absolute nightmares as people. Especially the leading man, Sherlock Holmes. Nightmarish is the word...though attractive is another word.


"Okay, thank you Mr Jones. We'll call you if you get the part." The man shambled off, and the casting manager called for the next candidate. John sighed. God, he hated auditioning. All the idiots, all the bumbling stupid people who just weren't right for the part in any way who turned up and mumbled or shouted their way through the script. It made him want to scream.

When he had good actors – the right actors – and a proper script, then he could start, then he could dig in and make some headway, but finding the right people was something he hated. The laboriousness of it, having to be constantly polite to people who must have known they were entirely wrong for the part. He wished he could leave it all to casting and the writer, but that he could not do. He didn't trust them not to let the one slip through their fingers. Somewhere underneath he had a terrible idea that they would choose the wrong person, and he would be deprived of his perfect cast. Thus he endured auditioning.

The next man came in, and this time John looked up. His breath caught. There was something, something indefinable but undeniably _there_, in this man. He had chocolate curls looping luxuriously around his head and lapping at his neck, and his forget-me-not eyes sparkled with a degree of humour and…and that indefinable undeniable _something_. He was tall and pale, his lips full and pale, his limbs long and lithe. He wore a crisp white shirt, and equally crisp black trousers. In his hand was a long grey coat, which he sat on the chair behind him. He did not sit on the chair, though, and John took that to be a good sign. It meant he was eager. It was the lazy and the over-confident that sat on that chair, in John's experience. He kept it there as a sort of test.

"What's your name?" John asked.

"Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes." The man's voice was yet another layer, smooth and deep with a hint of gravel underneath. _Like chocolate with nutty bits in_, John thought.

"Right." The writer, Molly, a rather nervous sort of woman but utterly brilliant at what she did, handed John the man's credentials. John gave her a smile of thanks, and scanned the page, flipping it over. "You don't have much experience, do you?" John said, wondering why. This boy fair sparkled with talent.

"No, not really. I was going to be a chemist, you see," Sherlock explained.

"Oh. Did it all fall through? Not get the grades you expected?"

"Oh no," Clearly Sherlock considered plan B as something that happened to other people. "I simply thought that that career of mine could wait, and I've always loved acting. I was in a production just after finals, and it opened my eyes to a whole new world, to put it in clichéd terms."

"Right. Oh, yes…a first in Chemistry…from Cambridge…aged 20…and half a phD." John looked up, stunned. "My God man, you're some sort of genius. Why the hell are you going into acting? You realise you'll earn pittance and be out of work half the time?"

"I plan to be out of work as little as possible." Sherlock replied, curtly. "And besides, I can go back and finish my doctorate on scholarship whenever I wish. I am not without reasonable safety nets."

"All right, all right…let's see you act. I'll read Helena, and you fill in Maurice. You have your script?"

"No. I don't need a script. I've memorised the piece."

John raised an incredulous eyebrow, turning over his own script. "If you're sure. Right, then. From 'Sometimes I wonder what you think you're doing.'." John said, and coughed, preparing himself to repeat the line.

"Could you come up here and say it?" Sherlock asked.

John looked up quizzically. "I don't think that's strictly necessary." he said.

"I'm a very tactile actor, Mr Watson." _So he knows my name,_ John thought. _He's done his research. Good on the boy._

"Fine, fine." He stood up. He actually found himself quite liking the idea of being touched by those slim, light hands. He walked up and stood beside Sherlock, turning to face him, looking down at the script and then back up into those blue, blue eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what you think you're doing." he said.

"What I think I'm doing?" The boy's voice soared. "Oh Helena, how can you ask me that?" he sounded genuinely hurt. "I thought you understood, I really thought you understood. My God, I thought at least someone might. Is it too much to ask? Must every visionary be alone? So many are. I wonder why? Is it that the solitude aids the mind, forces it on to wonders? Or is it simply that the world seeks to deny us our inheritance, seeks to stop us being who we were made to be, fulfilling our potential? Is it man versus the world? Or is it man versus God, or man versus humanity? How can we tell? Dear God, Helena, why is the world so full of question marks?"

Sherlock turned away from John, and continued his impassioned speech. "I am no hero, Helena, and I do not claim to be. I am a poet and a dreamer, a prophet and a madman. You label me as all or you may label me as none. I shall take each name, bestowed as insult or as chalice to me, and I wear them as their burden or their perfume.

"Helena, if you cannot understand me, then I shall leave you until you can. I'm going to town. Perhaps I'll come back, and perhaps I won't, and if I die, I die without you, and on your head so be it." And with that Sherlock stalked off to the edge of room, before grinning and coming back. John, slightly shaken, returned to his seat. _Oh God he's too much. Too perfect. And, I think, horribly obnoxious and quite probably a pain in the arse, but gorgeous and all too perfect._

"Er, you may go, now, Sherlock…Mr Holmes." John said. "We'll, um, call you with details if you get the part."

"Thank you." The boy smiled dazzlingly, picked up his coat and, swirling it around himself, removed himself from the room.

Mike Stamford, the casting director, turned to John, and Molly turned too. "He's perfect." Molly said. "It's as if I wrote Maurice based on him."

"And he adds such a spice…" John added, tone slightly wistful.

Mike grinned. "I knew you two would like him. I told him to audition for the role. He was going to go in for Winston in Anderson's 1984, but I said this'd be a better bet, for all Molls is a small playwright. It has to be said, John, that of you and Anderson you're the better director."

John smiled. Trust Mike to organise everything in the background. Then he frowned, a small realisation sinking in. "Do we have to audition all the rest of them?" he asked.

Mike nodded. "We owe them that much, John. Just sit through it. I'll read in Helena." He paused. "By the way, I have the most _perfect _actress in mind for her."

Soon enough, the cast was set and had all been rung and told they had the part (Sherlock last, because as John said, that boy needed no more self-confidence; he was already borderline narcissistic). The producer had hired them a studio, one John had used before. On the Monday they were due to start rehearsals, Molly and John met at the studio and let themselves in, surveying the place. John sat down in a chair, his feet on a table. Molly leant against the ballet bar, reflected in the mirrors that lined the wall, and sipped coffee.

"Looking forward to it?" John asked, leaning back in the chair.

Molly shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, it's a great cast, but we just have to see if the dynamics work."

John nodded, and glanced at his watch. "They'll be here in a minute."

Sure enough, in about ten minutes the cast were assembled in a strange-looking huddle in the middle of the room. "Right." John said, standing up. "I think we'd better all get to know each other. Grab a chair each and make a circle." The cast did so, chattering amongst themselves. Then, when they were seated, John continued. "We'll all say our names, our role and the last production we worked on." This caused several raised eyebrows among the actors.

Monica, the producer, entered at that point and stood leaning against the wall, watching them. Everyone saw her and knew they had better behave. "I'll start." John said. "I'm John Watson, and I'm the director. The last production I worked on was Twelfth Night, the Biscuit Box one with Nathan Kendrick." He pointed to his left.

Molly put down her coffee. "Molly Hooper. I wrote the play, and my last production was Knees And Toes with Rhinestadt Theatre."

John stared pointedly at the next actor, a short black girl with hair in thick braids curled on top of her head. She introduced herself as Mary Winters. "In the chorus, last production was Who Killed Mr Money."

The next person, a rather camp gentleman with red hair, said his name was Anthony Harrison. "In the ensemble, last production was WWW dot."

The girl after him was tall and blonde. "Lorna Stanton, chorus. This is my first proper production."

Then came a tall, strikingly beautiful dark-haired woman with pale skin, crimson lips and beautifully arched eyebrows. "Irene Adler. I play Amanda, Maurice's benefactor. My last production was Secrets Of Sex." No-one was surprised. She looked exactly fit for erotica, especially considering what she was wearing, which was a mid-length black dress which rustled with a beguiling swish of silk.

After her was another black girl with brown-black hair that wriggled fearsomely. "Sally Donovan." she said, in a voice that sounded like it would take no trouble from anyone. "I play Helena, Maurice's wife. My last production was The Taming Of The Shrew with the Londonderry Theatre."

Next was a shorter man with rugged black hair and a mischievous expression. "Jim Moriarty," he said, and it was found that he had an Irish accent. "I play Nelson, Maurice's lover."

Then, finally, came Sherlock. John had been watching him since he came in. The tousled chocolate curls were the same, but this time the young man was wearing a t-shirt and smooth grey skinny jeans (which clung, John noticed, perfectly to his legs with barely a crease). "Sherlock Holmes." he said, in that lilting low coffee-and-cream voice. "I play Maurice, visionary extraordinaire. I've not done a professional production before now." Most people were a bit surprised at that.

They ran through the first lot of scenes that morning, and John found that he had, in general, cast the characters well. The chemistry between Sherlock and all the other actors was good (_And how could it fail to be, _John wondered, _when he had such eyes and cheekbones?_), and the ensemble worked well as a group. Everything was going along smoothly, even if he had a sense that Sherlock and Sally were a disastrous argument waiting to happen, and Irene was a little too coquettish for her own good.


End file.
